


dancing on my own

by biblionerd07



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, POV Outsider, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:12:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2562668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George Aiken's been a pub owner a long time--not much escapes him, not even the way that dark-haired soldier looks at his friend when he thinks no one's looking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dancing on my own

George Aiken has been tending this pub for nigh on thirty years now. He was here during the first Great War and he himself saw battle in the Boer before he lost his foot, so these men who pop up in non-regulation clothes don't faze him one bit. He knows soldiers when he sees them, and if they're a covert group they'll not be disturbed by the likes of him.

They're a strange group, truth be told. Most significant, of course, are the two sticking out like sore thumbs, the two with skin that doesn't match everyone else's, but they've also got a good British boy with them and a Frenchie. The remaining three seem standard American, though one's big as a house with an easy smile and one's got a mustache to rival any Aiken's seen before. The third one smiles when anyone looks at him but can't seem to keep it up otherwise. He's got the dark look in his eyes Aiken's seen in many men who hold up his counter, soldiers come back from war with eyes deep and haunted. The corn-fed blond keeps drawing him back to the conversation, back to the present, and watches closely when he thinks no one will notice.

They do drink a lot, this strange group, and they're loud and a bit bawdy but not rude to the girls and they're not starting any fights, so Aiken doesn't mind a bit. The mustache man tries to draw Aiken's youngest girl Liza into a dance, and when she skitters nervously, twisting her hands, he only sweeps off his ridiculous bowler and bids her good day. Aiken's taking a shine to them, in his way, behind the bar and observing. He's been in this business long enough he can read people well; he's observant and sharp despite the way he's getting up in years.

It doesn't take much more than eyes to see the easy way the big blond and the hollow-eyed one touch: a casual brush of hands as they pass drinks around, a hand clapped on a shoulder after a joke, heads tilting together to catch low-spoken words and quirked eyebrows. Aiken has them pegged as brothers or close as for the majority of the night, until Liza's shaking hands send a pint over and the blond springs to his feet to help her.

Hollow-Eyes follows his every movement, and under cover of distraction lets his eyes lose their hollowness just a bit to fill with so much feeling Aiken almost thinks to look away. It's adoration, it's devotion, and it's heartbreak, all in two eyes. Aiken wants to curse the man—hardly older than a boy, really, maybe two years on Aiken's Bobby—for being so open. He thinks no one can see but Aiken sees it like it's lit up in lights and someday someone else is bound to see it as well.

The eyes shutter closed again once the blond comes back to the table after spending a few moments clasping Liza's hands in his and easing her stuttering apologies. Aiken uses how people treat his timid, nervous Liza as a yardstick and finds himself thinking _can't blame the lad, not really_ , when he remembers Hollow-Eyes staring. The blond is good, Aiken can tell, and not the kind of good that burns out once the heat's put on.

Aiken doesn't agree with the things those who are that way do, doesn't think it's natural or right, but neither does he think beating or imprisoning them will do any good. He won't turn his suspicions to the police, wouldn't anyway but especially not after the blond's display of kindness to Liza. If a man who's good to Liza is close to Hollow-Eyes, Hollow-Eyes himself must be good, too, or at least redeemable, never mind what he does in his bed.

And then Hollow-Eyes notices Biddy trying to fetch another chair for a table in the back and moves to help her; he's merely polite until he sees Biddy doesn't share her sister's jitters, then he winks and quirks his mouth just so and Aiken knows Hollow-Eyes is shrewd when it comes to dodging suspicion, but the movements look mechanical, practiced, and his eyes haven't filled up a mite. Aiken can't be offended for Biddy, on account of her upcoming wedding, but he wonders what happened to the soldier to empty him out this way.

The blond is watching, Aiken sees, a slight press to his lips that's a barely-there frown and for a second Aiken thinks maybe they're _both_ of them perverted that way, but then he reads the worry on the blond's face and realizes he's ruminating on the same topic as Aiken: what happened to this boy.

The soldiers are drinking a steady amount, but for two. The blond's barely finished his second bottle of beer, happy to shrug and smile and laugh with the others but not packing it away. Hollow-Eyes, on the other hand, is tipping back neat whiskeys like water and his eyes aren't heading toward glass one iota. He seems to fall further into his gloom with every drink, like the whiskey's telling him dark secrets he'd rather not hear but can't stop listening to.

The blond leans in close, large hand spanning his friend's back, and whispers something low, brow furrowed as he casts a glance at the whiskey tumbler. Hollow-Eyes shrugs the hand off his shoulder blades and stands, moving toward the back of the pub toward the toilets. The blond watches him go, frowning fully now and his muscles bunched in anticipation of getting up and following.

But then the door opens and a woman comes in, a woman with red lipstick and a smirk, and the blond's whole face goes moony for her. He jumps to his feet to greet her, but ends up standing in front of her saying not much of anything. A blush rises high on his face and up to the tips of his ears and this seems to amuse the woman, but not in a mocking way. It's clear she cares for him the way he does her.

The blond's busy enough tripping over his own tongue to miss Hollow-Eyes coming back from the toilets. Hollow-Eyes stops a few feet back from the table, leaning against the bar in an agitated, effortlessly handsome way, and it doesn't seem he's even trying to hide his discomfort as he stares at the blond and the woman. He looks like he ate a lemon, like he's upset, but all the same he stays back in the shadow and waits. Aiken can already tell Hollow-Eyes could draw the blond's attention with the right words, and a man like that knows it as well, but he doesn't.

When the blond flounders, Hollow-Eyes takes a deep breath, eyes closed for just a second, and then pastes on a playful grin and saunters over to his friend and the woman, a quick word rolling off his tongue easily as he pats his friend on the shoulder.

The blond rolls his eyes and fires back, and the woman's face lights up at his apparent wit. Aiken feels a bit indignant on behalf of Hollow-Eyes, for all his moralizing moments earlier. He'd seen the boy's situation laid out plain on his face, and here he goes shoving it aside and helping the blond with the woman. It doesn't seem entirely fair, especially not after whatever had made Hollow-Eyes so hollow. The woman says something with a raised eyebrow, and the blond turns back to the table with an apologetic look, obviously begging off. He asks Hollow-Eyes a question, and Hollow-Eyes waves him away, so the blond and the woman leave together.

Hollow-Eyes stares after them a moment even after the door closes, throat working a little as he swallows hard, but the other men at the table call out to him. He squares his shoulders and dredges up a smirk again. They drink another round, sing another verse to a song Aiken's never heard and figures must be a Yankee tune. Hollow-Eyes makes himself stumble where not a moment ago his hands were steady and sure, and waves at the group with a dopey smile.

It falls off his face as he turns to leave, quickly replaced by misery so deep Aiken's not sure if it's about the blond or whatever demons he's battling in his head. Aiken wonders about them, sometimes, even for years to come. Sometimes he'll see the blond's face pop up into his mind out of the blue, and then he'll think of Hollow-Eyes and his pained, bitter smile as he sent the one he loved with someone else. Aiken knows it's wrong, but part of him hopes the blond worked it out and returned the adoration Aiken saw on the other man's face.

Aiken doesn't know their names; they weren't the first nor the last soldiers from any Army to pass through his pub, and honestly they weren't even the most interesting. He doesn't know it takes them seventy years and a death apiece to get the adoration out in the open. He doesn't know the horrors that await his hollow-eyed far-off friend, and though he'd still purse his lips in disapproval over “those perversions”, part of him would be happy to know that even on the worst days, the blond can light up Hollow-Eyes's face and give him something to smile about.


End file.
